WARNING: Wall of textThread lightly
Oh dear. Now I just had to read this entire thread and conjure up a reply instead of just ignoring uninformed reviewers who won't read this forum anyway.
Let us start with webwit's statements:
In my opinion Das Keyboard is Das Evil, and is some kind of cruel joke on wannabee geeks who buy a feeling and also a crap product.
Here is all that is wrong:
1. Das Name. This is an American company, that does not make keyboard but orders OEM keyboards in Taiwan, where they don't make switches, they order it from Cherry (German). Where they don't make switches either, they get it made in the Czech Republic. Don't ride the bandwagon of German craftsmanship if you're just some redneck douche bag company, please.
2. The controller bug issues..
3. It shines like it wants to poke my eye out and is some luxury object. It is just a piece of plastic.
4. Overpriced, you pay for the silly name.
5. Cherry Blue switches, aimed at beginners who are impressed by clicky sounds or non-beginning douchebags who want to impress people by pressing small leafs of metal while typing. It is a b-switch.
6. Claim of worlds best keyboard. See various points above. It is not.
7. Only mechanical keyboard picked up by the sites like wired, where a douchebag reviewer with no knowledge of keyboards will be impressed by clicky sounds.
All in all a marketing trick aimed at uninformed people who like to show off how sophisticated they are by buying overpriced crap. A bit like the Apple crowd. Bernays would have been proud of both of them, these zealous students.
1.
Fact.
2.
"Half truth".
Any keyboard has a limited scanrate, but it depends on the user whether or not it is perceivable. In this case they managed to screw up their demographic research and designed the scanrate far too low.
3.
Opinion. Granted, it
is extremely shiny, but so is other stuff put out right now (like my
Nokia 6124 classic for example. Does what I want and more, but it is shiny). The Das stands out from other keyboards due to its "modern" design, even if that has drawbacks. We mostly prize keyboards by feel, whereas some judge it by looks. The Das tried to do both for the vague in-between crowd.
4.
Fact. You pay for the design and the name, technically it can be built for far less.
5.
FUD/Opinion. It's a different switch with totally different parameters. In the end, it makes contact just as good as a buckling spring, it's just that it has a radically different behaviour for the user.
On a sidenote: it doesn't "press" small leafs, instead the plunger stops the contact leaf from touching the contact when the key is not pressed down. Maybe some ALPS switch caused a mixup here (disclaimer: I haven't studied the whole ALPS family so I can't say which ones work like that).
6.
Fact. No keyboard can be the world's best, period. Until you "grow" one on a per-user basis, this remains marketing crap.
7.
Half truth. Most reviewers aren't paid to do thorough research, so it is already nice when a reviewer doesn't just copy the company's marketing FUD
at verbatim.
Heck, the real point here is that everyone is biased. For example, there are articles about the model M and even about Unicomp, yet only those knowing them take notice.
Anyway, all that to say the Das is far from the best bang for your buck(lingspringfix).
I'm in. I don't expect more than a handful of geekhackers will want to be associated with this dark subculture. Who needs em anyway?
(as I type this post on my Filco blue Cherry keyboard)
I guess you're planning on lumping the 83-key PC/XT diehards in with the 84-key PC AT fans. Technically, they both use Model F technology, but the 84-key was never referred to as a Model F by IBM.
I have a model F in shipment. If it does turn out to be an AT I'll try to collect the opinions into a thread together with my own review.
Someone suggested that perhaps the membrane needed to be struck more forcefully than the capacitive plates did, which may suggest why the mechanism was changed around. As far as I can see, the spring is the only thing that can account for the difference between the two designs, and that theory is the one which explains why IBM would make the mechanism feel of lower quality when there was no apparent advantage in terms of things like cost reduction.
And whatever Ripster may say, it's nothing to do with those godforsaken hammers...
This is hard to say. The main question is in which way their design goals changed between the design of the model F and M. Any statements below are based on speculation as I don't know all parameters of the design by heart.
Cost cutting was one of the design changes, so they probably threw out the PCB first. Because membrane switches need to deform the top switching surface, they probably needed an increased force to be put on the membrane. For this, the hammer design was probably changed to have more torque (I'll need to look at some schematics again to see how much truth this holds).
With regards to the spring, there are a few possibilities here:
- With modified hammers, chances were that the spring wouldn't have enough force to buckle and push the hammer, hence the need for a more rigid spring (less coils).
- Alternatively, IBM might have gotten complaints from typists that the F was too light and caused them to bottom out all the time. At least for the XT, it seems that you easily bottom out and do so mercilessly.
This theory may seem odd, but do remember that the IBM PC series made computers "affordable", hence a lot of companies who hired only typists may have switched to computers. Under the right circumstances, this might have caused a large group of people preferring a heavier keyboard.
- Third: most likely it is a combination of the above.
With heavier springs, the feel is sure to be different. It buckles differently, and this in turn may mean that the spring may buckle earlier so you don't bottom out. It does need a higher force, of course.
I would love to find a Model M that felt anything like a Model F. Having used a Unicomp and Model F side by side for quite a while, they are quite different to eachother. Maybe the earlier Model Ms felt like Model Fs, but I have never used one that wasn't in a horribly worn out condition.
Either way, the difference between the Unicomp and the Model F was sufficient to make me think "Wow..." when I pressed a key on the Model F for the first time.
[strike]As I stated above, I think it's in a combination of the hammers and springs.[/strike]
EDIT: So many similarities and differences between the model F and M that I still don't know. Better not to speculate until a successful conversion is made.
